


Charlie's Dragon

by The_Cosmic_Scribe



Series: Ari's Tumblr Requests [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, Dragons, Gen, One Shot, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 20:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15104312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Cosmic_Scribe/pseuds/The_Cosmic_Scribe
Summary: In which Charlie Weasley recalls his most precious memory: the day he saw a dragon for the first time.





	Charlie's Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this on my HPHM blog (mira-de-la-rosa) as part of a request. Hope you enjoy! Don't forget to leave a comment and a kudos :D

With a family as big as Charlie’s, making memories was always a common occurrence. After all, with so many lively people living in such a small home, something remarkable was bound to happen.

Charlie loved retelling his friends all the misadventures his family got up to, from the twins trying to train the garden gnomes to do their bidding to the time Ginny nearly strangled Percy’s pet rat Scabbers with her chubby little toddler hands. It always brought wild laughs and bright smiles to their faces, something that filled Charlie with so much joy that he couldn’t help but laugh and smile along too.

Though, the shenanigans he got up to at Hogwarts also made some rather lasting impressions in his mind. Joining the Gryffindor Quidditch team, attending his first ever Care of Magical Creatures class, and sneaking into the Forbidden Forest to finds dragons with Bill were some of the fondest memories he’s made at the old wizarding school.

However, there was only one that took the top spot.

It was during his last year at Hogwarts, a week or so before the summer holiday. Charlie was out after curfew, trekking through the Forbidden Forest once more for nostalgia’s sake. He remembered how convinced he was that dragons lived in these woods, how eager he was to risk his life to catch even a glimpse at his childhood obsession. Despite all the warnings, despite all the claims that the Forbidden Forest was not a proper home for dragons, Charlie spent most of his nights wandering these woods. He scanned the forest, hoping to cross paths with those mighty beasts. There just had to be dragons here, he knew it! Forget what Professor Kettleburn or Dumbledore said. Charlie knew there was a chance, even if it was slim.

Now, years later, here he was: not searching for the creatures he knows do not live in this place but searching for those same feelings his childish brain conjured up during his dragon-catching escapades. Charlie supposed it was kind of ironic, but he digressed. He was older now, much more knowledgeable and wiser. There were other places he could go to where dragons roamed, where he could finally catch them and understand the raw magic inside of them. If Bill could achieve his dreams of becoming a Curse-Breaker, then why couldn’t Charlie achieve his dreams of finally being able to see dragons?

As the moon cast an ivory glow over the trees while the stars twinkled like finely polished diamonds, Charlie found himself in a small glade near the heart of the forest. By the light of his wand, he could faintly see the clusters of wild flowers dappling the grass, swaying in the warm breeze. Towering trees surrounded him at all sides, encasing him like he was a small mouse trapped in a gigantic cage. The sounds of hooves snapping twigs and rustling leaves echoed in Charlie’s ears, though those were the only things he could hear clearly. The rest of the forest was silent. Not a single other creature was stirring, probably asleep in whatever nest or shelter they dwelt in.

Charlie was about to turn back and call it a night when he heard it: a low, throaty rumble. It was a strange sound, one he had never heard before. No creature he had encountered in Professor Kettleburn’s class made a sound as deep as that. It made the ground shake, made him shudder like he’d never shuddered before. It was powerful, yet cautious. Like a growl, but also like a whimper.

A warning.

He scanned the glade again, extending the light of his wand out. At first, there was nothing but flowers and grass and trees. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to be alarmed by. But then, he saw it: slick black scales, leathery wings like a bat’s, and vibrant green eyes as bright as emeralds.

A dragon.

Charlie stumbled in his steps, practically tripping over himself as he approached the creature. It was only a baby; roughly the size of a cat or dog. Its wings were still limp and unusable, its scales still hardening. The dragon had to be about a few weeks old, maybe a month at most.

And, it was probably the most precious thing Charlie has ever seen.

The rest of the night was an absolute blur. Most of it was spent coaxing the dragon into letting Charlie hold it, while the rest was just him watching the dragon as it wandered about the glade. At some point, Charlie placed the dragon in a hole at the base of a tree. He promised Ebony that he would return in the morning, so that he could inform a professor and help find it a proper home. Then, he returned to his dorm and went straight to bed, dreaming of soaring through the skies on the back of his dragon.

When he returned to the glade the following morning, there was no sign of his dragon. Only a note, left in the same hole his dragon was kept in.

_Your dragon is safe._

_~J_

Charlie wouldn’t understand the message till years later, when he was in Romania. On his first day at the dragon sanctuary, his boss tasked him to study a dragon that had been in their care for several years.

“Magnificent creature, ol’ Ebony,” his boss told him. “She was only a baby when she was given to us by a rather peculiar man. Said he found her in the woods in Scotland, by that wizarding school.”

A sense of familiarity bubbled at that.

“Hogwarts?” Charlie asked.

“Think so,” his boss said with a shrug. “The guy wouldn’t tell us much about him or where he found the dragon. Only said its name was Ebony and she liked nibbling on wildflowers.”

“What about his name?” he pressed on. “Did he give you that?”

His boss paused, tapping her chin with a thoughtful frown. When she finally answered him, a look of absolute shock was plastered across his face.

“Jacob, I believe.”

That night, Jacob and his sibling received an owl from a certain dragon-loving redhead. It was also on that night that Jacob received a stern talking to from his rather furious and slightly exasperated sibling.


End file.
